Fighting Al Qaeda's New Weapon

Osama bin Laden's
election-eve missive appears to have backfired. Indeed, his wild
claims that he will bankrupt America by forcing us to fund
counterterrorism efforts -- along with the new warnings from "Azzam
the American" that more attacks are on the way -- left many
Americans scratching their heads.

The tapes do little to help us understand the severity of the
terrorist threat against the United States. On the one hand, they
demonstrate bin Laden's capacity to reach a global audience,
getting his picture on every cable news channel, displacing
election chatter on the nightly news and garnering attention on the
Sunday talk shows. On the other hand, the fact that bin Laden has
spent more time talking than fighting may reflect the toll the war
on terrorism has taken on his terrorist network.

Since 9/11, bin Laden has had few victories to crow about. The
bombing in Spain didn't keep that country or other NATO allies from
sending troops last month to help out in Afghanistan. And the
successful Afghan elections -- thoroughly repudiating the Taliban
-- were hardly good news for the world's most notorious terrorist
leader. Yes, terrorism is rampant in Iraq, but the political
process is still moving forward and Iraqis line up every day at
great personal risk to enlist in their security forces.

So far, since President Bush declared war on terrorism, bin Laden's
greatest achievements have been eluding capture and circulating
about two dozen audio and videotapes. Hitler did as much, spewing
defiant speeches from his Berlin bunker almost to the end.

While the tapes offer no definitive proof that terrorism is either
waxing or waning, they do underscore one key aspect of the
struggle: the role of psychological warfare. Bin Laden's videos are
propaganda, pure and simple, designed to weaken U.S. resolve and
foster recruiting and fund raising for al Qaeda. Defeating
terrorism means crushing its campaign to spread ideas and arguments
as well as taking out its leadership, support networks and
sanctuaries.

Americans tend to think of psychological warfare as a relic of
World War II or the Cold War. The phrase conjures images of planes
dropping leaflets over some foreign country or radio broadcasts
spilling behind the Iron Curtain. Most people assume they are
immune from the threat of psychological combat. Wrong. Today, the
techniques and instruments that can support psychological warfare
are diverse and readily available. (They include Web sites, e-mail,
online media, instant messaging, chat rooms and television.) And
they can be as easily deployed against America as they can against
distant lands.

Prevailing in the struggle of ideas, as in any battle, requires a
sound strategy and deliberate effort. The right strategy involves
four points:

Understanding
the enemy. Through its efforts on the Internet, in the media
and on the Arab street, al Qaeda is waging an aggressive, albeit
perhaps desperate, war of words.

Doing more to
discredit the ideologies that feed terrorism. At the root of
the current wave of violence against the United States and its
allies is a blasphemous interpretation of religion that sanctions
killing Americans and others, even moderate and orthodox Muslims
who don't agree with lies that justify killing civilians,
glorifying suicide bombings and other terror tactics.

Continually making the case that there is a credible alternative to
extremism and repression.

Making it clear
that the United States will never retrench or retreat. We must
destroy any glimmer of hope among the terrorists that we will ever
let them prevail in their fascist schemes.

These four points provide the core of a sound strategy for winning
the struggle of ideas --and turning bin Laden into a media
has-been.

James Jay Carafano is a senior research fellow for defense and
homeland security at the Heritage Foundation.

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Osama bin Laden's election-eve missive appears to have backfired. Indeed, his wild claims that he will bankrupt America by forcing us to fund counterterrorism efforts left many Americans scratching their heads.

About the Author

James Jay Carafano, Ph.D.Vice President for the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy, and the E. W. Richardson Fellow

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